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Many considered this the dirtiest divorce of its time, perhaps of all time. That a man would name his son as corespondent is what attracted my attention to the case. What held my attention was the depth to which William Earl Dodge Stokes Sr. sank in his efforts to have his wife declared an adulteress unfit to be given custody of the couple's two children. Though she had much more evidence to work with, had she chosen to smear her husband, Mrs. Stokes took the high ground and held it in what proved to be an incredibly long case that – like a car spinning its wheels in the mud – made a lot of noise and splattered a lot of people, but wound up where is started. Helen Elwood Stokes must have been transformed during the eight years she and her husband lived together, because it hardly seems possible that the woman who gave better than she got during cross-examination by one of the country's best lawyers could be the same person foolish enough to marry W. E. D. Stokes, a strange, suspicious man who preferred to communicate through subpoenas. The arrogant Stokes had a knack for making enemies. His wealth made him distrust most people, especially lawyers, though he constantly summoned them to handle his many lawsuits. He was often foolish, but led a fascinating life, though it ended, I think, well short of expectations. He died with less money than he had inherited, and his money continued to trickle away after his death due to lawsuits that had been initiated beforehand. What follows is a long tale, but I've tried to present it in a way that allows a reader to quickly skip through the highlights if they choose to avoid links the many newspaper stories I found about the adventures of W. E. D. Stokes. The 1921 story at the top of this page was a starting point, but Stokes often sent me back to the mid-1800s. His divorce suits against Helen Elwood Stokes in 1921 and 1923 captured the attention of millions of newspaper readers, but, in retrospect, what went on in court and behind the scenes was a sad and shameful waste of money and time. That also could be said about the often bizarre life of W. E. D. Stokes, except some of what happened to him was hilarious, albeit unintentionally. The guy met a lot of prominent people – and managed to infuriate most of them. |
| His was a mad, mad, mad, mad world |
| 1852: William Earl Dodge Stokes is born into a wealthy New York City family. His parents: James Boulter Stokes and Caroline Phelps Stokes. W. E. D. is the youngest of four sons. His brothers are Anson Phelps Stokes, James Boulter Stokes Jr. and Thomas. He has four sisters, Elizabeth, Dora Lamb, Olivia and Caroline. |
| 1873: W. E. D. Stokes' first cousin, Edward S. "Ned" Stokes, is convicted of murdering prominent financier Jim Fisk, and sentenced to hang. He wins a retrial and again is found guilty. There is yet a third trial, this one paid for by his uncle James Stokes at the urging of his son, W. E. D., then just 21. The third trial results in another guilty verdict, but a much softer sentence. A few years later the Stokes cousins become business associates – and bitter enemies. |
| 1889-1890: W. E. D. Stokes is appointed as secretary on a committee formed to secure the 1893 World's Fair for New York City. Committee chairman is former mayor Abram Hewitt, who develops an intense dislike of Stokes. The feeling is mutal. Stokes resigns the committee and the World's Fair is given to Chicago. |
| 1895: Nineteen-year-old Rita Hernandez y de Alba de Acosta becomes the first Mrs. W. E. D. Stokes. She undoubtedly is the love of his life, but the love of her life is ... shoes. It's no surprise their marriage is brief, ending several months before divorce makes it official in 1900. She gives birth to William Earl Dodge Stokes Jr. a year after the wedding. Although the boy is placed in her custody by the divorce, she sends him to live with his father. She'll spend the rest of her life denying that she sold the boy to Stokes. |
| 1895: Stokes and his young wife are in bed when they hear shouting from a man who seems to have murder on his mind. Stokes investigates and discovers that man is coming upstairs, apparently with a weapon in his hand. Stokes counter attacks, waving two empty champagne bottles over his head, and succeeds in chasing the intruder out of his house. Turns out the man is the brother of one of the servants and imbibed too freely on champagne punch that was left over from an afternoon party at the Stokes home. |
| 1896: W. E. D. Stokes purchases the Patchen-Wilkes horse farm near Lexington, Kentucky. He may have had a love of horses beforehand, but the timing indicates the property was acquired to please and impress Mrs. Stokes, a world-class rider. During the next three years the farm often is referred to as belonging to her, though it remains Stokes property for several years after the couple is divorced. Several leading trotters are bred at Patchen-Wilkes. It was probably love or perhaps the fact that he was younger at the time, but Stokes tries much harder to impress wife number one than he will wife number two. He and wife Rita spend their summers in Newport and other colonies for the rich and pretentious. |
| 1900: That adage about no good deed going unpunished comes true for W. E. D. Stokes, who offers food and lodging to an old schoolmate who has fallen on hard times. The friend returns the favor by systematically stealing things from Stokes, who finally catches him in the act. |
| 1902: While taking a ride in his carriage, born-again bachelor W. E. D. Stokes is flagged down by a pretty young woman who's leaning out her bedroom window. Her name is Lucy Ryley (or Riley; she later takes the last name Randolph). Thus begins a sad, tawdry affair. In 1907 she sues Stokes for child support, claiming he is the father of her four-year-old son. Stokes, a veteran of more court battles than he can count, wins this one on a legal technicality. What happens afterward to the woman and her son is unknown. |
| 1899-1904:Stokes commissions an architect to design an apartment hotel, then supervises its construction, doing whatever it takes to have it built on schedule. He names it the Hotel Ansonia after his maternal grandfather, Anson Greene Phelps, who founded a Connecticut town by the same name. When it opens, the Ansonia is the biggest, fanciest hotel in New York City, the first to be air conditioned. |
| 1905: W. E. D. Stokes has a dream and follows it to Albany where he proposes that the Erie Canal be filled in and replaced by four sets of rails for freight trains. As a bonus, he suggests a pipeline be laid while the canal is filled so that it can deliver to New York City a plentiful supply of drinking water – from Lake Erie. The reaction? Stokes should keep his dreams to himself. |
| 1906: Political cartoonist Homer Davenport becomes a co-conspirator in a practical joke proposed by W. E. D. Stokes. Davenport experiments with cross-breeding animals at his farm in Morristown, New Jersey. The mating of an Egyptian duck and a goose from Winnipeg results in three unusual looking birds. Stokes secretly drops them off at the swan pond in Central Park, then anonymously contacts naturalists to inquire about the unusual creatures. The hoax works. Several months later Stokes confesses, much to the embarrassment of naturalists who claimed the birds were Arctic snow geese rarely seen in New York. |
| 1906: John Singleton, millionaire and partner in the gold-rich Yellow Aster mine in California, checks into the Hotel Ansonia with his wife, Stella Graham Singleton. They are joined by Mrs. Singleton's sister, Lillian, an eighteen-year-old would-be actress. W. E. D. Stokes wastes no time introducing himself to the teenager. It's the beginning of an affair that leads to the wildest night of Stokes' life. (See 1911, June 7.) |
| 1906: In October an ex-convict named Al Adams, the one-time king of the New York City numbers racket, commits suicide in his suite at the Ansonia. City coroner Julius Harburger, who'll later be elected sheriff of New York County, thinks Adams was murdered, and sets out to prove the crime was committed by W. E. D. Stokes. |
| 1907:The Ansonia may be fancy, but what's that smell coming from the roof? Why, it's the Stokes farm, that includes several animals, including enough chickens to supply hotel tenants with eggs. The city sets out to eliminate the farm, which violates a city ordinance, and after one false start finally succeeds. Years later Stokes will buy more chickens and keep them in his apartment, much to the displeasure of the second Mrs. Stokes. |
| 1907: W. E. D. Stokes' automobile driver is arrested for speeding – he was going 24 miles per hour! – and when Stokes presents himself in court the judge offers a lecture about rich men, their automobiles and their disregard for others. Stokes responds with a generous offer that takes the judge by surprise. |
| 1910: W. E. D. Stokes Jr., 14, president of the Junior Wireless Club of America, leads a delegation from his organization to Washington to speak out against a proposed Senate bill that would regulate radio communication. He becomes the youngest person ever to appear before a Senate committee. |
| 1910: Lovely Helen Elwood of Denver, Colorado, moves into the Hotel Ansonia and lives with Dr. and Mrs. Wilbur A. Hendryx. W. E. D. Stokes soon notices the new tenant and comes a'courtin'. |
| 1911: February 11: W. E. D. Stokes and Helen Elwood are married in Jersey City, N.J., by a college classmate of Stokes, who lies about his age and why they "had to" get married secretly. |
| 1911: June 7: During a visit to his old girl friend Lillian Graham, supposedly to retrieve some letters, Stokes is shot three times in the legs and beaten by three Japanese men who were setting up a dinner party across the hall. Thus begins The Case of the Shooting Show Girls. Several letters exchanged by Stokes and Graham are ready during the resulting trial. One of those letters, in which Stokes described himself as an Old Cove, will haunt him the rest of his life. |
| 1913: The New York Times reports on April 6 that W. E. D. Stokes will be one of the investers in company that plans to distribute the controversial Dr. Friedrich F. Friedmann cure to tuberculoisis. Stokes says he will be doing "God's work" by offering the cure to the poor. The Stokes group is outbit by another concern. Dr. Friedmann receives $125,000 for his so-called turtle treatment, plus almost $2 million in stock. The enterprise is short-lived. In May the New York City Board of Health bans the treatment as studies indicate the unpatented "cure" doesn't work. |
| 1914: In September Mrs. Helen Stokes gives birth to her son, James, in Denver, where her mother lives. The baby is doing well, but the mother's condition is precarious for several days. W. E. D. Stokes, who remained in New York City when his wife went out west, is notified of his wife's condition and takes the first train to Denver, arriving there on September 15. (When the first Mrs. Stokes gave birth to W. E. D. Stokes Jr. in 1896, she, too, had a rough delivery and for the next 24 hours or so was considered on the brink of death.) |
| 1915: December 29: Mrs. Stokes gives birth to daughter Muriel at the Vanderbilt Hotel in New York City. |
| 1916: W. E. D. Stokes holes up at his Kentucky horse farm and writes a book – “The Right to be Well Born: Horse Breeding in its Relation to Eugenics.” In it he suggests the solution to many of our problems is good breeding. He endorses the idea of sterilizing defective humans. He obviously believes in a caste system. Few people read the book. It would have been better for the his legacy if the it had been destroyed because today "The Right to be Well Born" has placed Stokes alongside Adolf Hitler because of their similar views on a master race. |
| 1917: Stokes injects himself in a national controversy over senators and congressmen who do not support United States involvement in the World War. His letter of the vice president is published in several newspapers; in it he advocates shooting disloyal Americans. |
| 1917: November 4: Jewels valued at many thousands of dollars belonging to Mrs. W. E. D. Stokes are stolen from a locked suitcase while she was traveling to New York on a train. Mrs. Stokes tells the police the gems were in a brown covered case. She suggests the thief possessed a key. The implication was not lost on her husband who, some believed, arranged the theft in hopes of discovering some of the jewelry had been given to her by another man. |
| 1918: A young man named Edmond Rousselot, who calls himself “the Marquis di Castillot,” meets W. E. D. Stokes and tells him he is best friends with the King of Spain, who'll align his country with the United States and its allies in World War I and beyond – for $50 million. Stokes gives the "marquis" $500 to cover entertainment expenses in New York, then takes the young man to the J. P. Morgan company and endorses his request for a $50 million loan for Spain. The Morgan official knows a con man when he sees one. Rousselot turns out to be a fugitive from France and he is soon arrested. |
| 1918: Mrs. Stokes finally has her way about leaving the Hotel Ansonia, which she feels is not a proper place to raise children. The family moves into a house a few blocks away. |
| 1918: December 31: Mrs. Stokes goes out for the evening with her visiting second cousin, Hal Billig, her husband begging off on account of illness. Mrs. Stokes and Billig return later than Stokes thinks appropriate. Long-held feelings of jealousy and resentment spill out in a three-way argument that, in effect, ends the marriage. Billig checks into a hotel that evening, Stokes moves back to the Hotel Ansonia – by himself. |
| Divorce was inevitable. W. E. D. Stokes plots his case for more than two years before taking it to court. Mrs. Stokes has another agenda, choosing to remain his wife while living 2,000 miles away, in Denver, until she recovers dower rights she signed away in the early months of her marriage. |
| Some background on Helen Elwood Stokes. |
| The divorce finally comes to a boil |